RELEASED Elithian Races Mod - A Starbound Expansion 2.3.10

This is one of the most complex and largest things I've done; the reason it's in a black void is the Pocket World Mod.
It would have been pyramidal, but given the size of the inner, not-maintenance areas, that would have made it massively unreasonable to complete so it's just a huge box.
Third image for scale.

 

Good find, I'll try to fix this for the next update!

I like the idea, but it'll have to be simplified a bit since a wall that only specific projectiles and entities can move through likely isn't possible in the current API... A wall that only lets projectiles through, but not creatures, NPCs and players would be possible though (or the other way around, a wall that blocks projectiles but not other entities). I'm going to think it over a bit more to figure out what exactly the Architect should be, but I certainly agree it would be nice for it to actually build something!

That's a massive build, and it looks awesome! I'm still finding new little touches, and I've been looking at it for a while now! Are all of the darkened spaces corridors and stairways, or are there more rooms like the one in the third picture?

 

Some are corridors and stairways, some are rooms; I'll probably go over it later today and get some shots of the interesting parts.

 

I deliver!
Fun fact of note; the pipes do all connect in a sensible way, though this is mostly not visible unless you're following them along with your MM.

 

Awesome! The attention to detail is incredible here, love your build!

 

A bonus trink... diamond, really, it's not exactly a pyramid anymore.
This design unfortunately needs more tuning, since it's not very space-efficient.
What's trinkian culture like, anyway? All I know for sure is that they're efficient robots made by another race, and that's not really much to go on for architectural designs...

Also, the trink refrigeration unit, ship door, and sloped door don't have glows.
Is it intentional that the trinkian floor, hull panels, plating, and platforms don't have glows? I'm kind of assuming yes and/or it's difficult/not currently possible to do glows on tiles.

EDIT: actually how about I add another, slightly better-done diamond

 

Robotic, fat, ice egyptian midgets. That's what they are as far as my head cannon goes for them, couldn't dig up a lot in them either. Either way, I like to play them as their stuff is cool but I can't bring myself to look past how are aesthetically.

I wonder if there is a chance of one of the trink genders being swapped with a more intimidating humanoid shape, like a war bot of sorts, if not then I'll just keep on dreaming.

 

Again, looks awesome! The detail you put into background and exterior walls is incredible - I think I can learn something from your builds on that front! For the Trinkian culture, I unfortunately can't really answer that... The Trinks were originally designed by another member of the Elithian Alliance roleplay, but with their permission, I implemented the race into the mod as well since they look incredibly unique compared to the vanilla races. There's a short overview of the Notix/Trink Federation on our old forums, but it mostly talks about the Notix, not the Trinks. Their creator was originally going to write up an updated lore document for both races, but I haven't heard anything new on that front in a while. I do remember him talking about how the Trinks are essentially the Notix's emissaries for contact with other races - the Notix don't have eyes and are biologically very different from most other races, so the Trinks were built to better resemble humanoid faces and expressions to make diplomacy easier.

I'll try to fix the lights on the refrigeration unit and the doors - they should be relatively easy to fix! Tiles unfortunately only have a single layer, and so can't have glowing bits in them... It's possible to make tiles glow (i.e. make them act like a light source), but for the Trinkian tiles I've never found this to be very fitting - the entire tile would light up a bit, but the small lights would still have the same brightness as the rest of the tile.

Unfortunately I don't think such drastic 'gender' differences will ever be implemented - making armour fit both genders could become difficult - but the Trink do have other units which are somewhat different. Most of the units are just larger Trinks with largely the same body shape, though. There were a few models with more humanoid shapes, but I'm not yet sure if they'll be implemented into the mod in any way.

 

hey, would you be interested with working on the builds of this mod I'm working on? I only have 2 major structures planned with the rest being micro dungeons I can easily cook up. If you accept I won't be having you work immediately as the objects still need to be worked on

 

I am going to assume that the project is for the Imperium?

 

you are indeed correct

 

Pro Hominii Pugnemus!

 

that's pretty much the basic idea, but with a twist that involves Centensian technology

 

question: how to obtain the crafting tables whit existing caracter? I installed the mod, drop recurses and visual items, but no have idea for the tables.

 

Did a centensian ruin study to try and get a handle on their architecture... I think it's good and has enough of the 'carefully-symmetrical-except-not' thing they've got going.
It's pretty far out of my comfort zone, designwise, though, which I'll have to get over.

Also, for tiles that should actually glow, if probably very weakly, the centensian glowing panel.

 

The crafting tables are crafted from the basic crafting menu (press [C]), but for existing characters/characters of other races, you'll need to learn their crafting recipes first:

If you want to learn Avikan crafting recipes, explore desert planets until you find a large Avikan settlement. Every settlement has a teleporter in it which will take you directly to the Starfarer's Refuge, the Avikan-themed outpost. Once you're there, look for the gunsmith - he'll offer you a quest called "Avikan Crafting Techniques", which will reward you with an Avikan Crafting Guide on completion. That guide will instantly teach your character (almost) all Avikan recipes!

If you want to learn Trinkian crafting recipes, visit snowy or frozen planets and find a Trinkian settlement. Inside the largest buildings there will be a large terminal which offers you a quest called "Trinkian Crafting Techniques". That quest will again reward you with the appropriate crafting guide.

I like it so far! And yeah, they definitely have a bit of an unusual architectural style which may need some getting used to - it's a mix between perfect geometric and symmetrical shapes and more natural, irregular patterns. While I don't have any hard rules I use when designing these structures, the background walls are usually built by first creating rows of vertical tiles of various heights, then filling up the empty spaces with horizontal tiles and occasionally removing some vertical tiles to make the horizontal rows a bit longer. Once that's done, the regular panels are inserted into the walls semi-randomly.

The glowing panels are actually supposed to emit faint light, but it appears that one of Starbound's updates changed the config system for glowing tiles and thus broke the Centensian ones... I'll fix this in the next update!

 

First image is the 'base' I started with for the background, second is the end result with panels and smooth panels added. It lends itself very well to approximate symmetry.
I don't think this structure is done quite as well as it could be(specifically, the lack of 2x2 blocks of horizontal+vertical panels, which only show up under the teleporter and where each section touches), but it's definitely within the bounds of centensian architecture.

 

I don't know, maybe it's just me but the ruins of the centens don't really give much of anything in how their buildings actually looked. Even the above post's builds look more like a ruin that is in surprisingly good condition than an intact building. I don't know if you want to do this but it would be nice if a description of their overall building shape was brought into light, I imagine them to be really into obelisks and stuff like that, but maybe they built massive domes which held all their normal shaped buildings, or maybe all those ruins are actually just the tops of massive underground bases which inspired the avikan to build those underground complexes. You see most of us really want to build themed stuff but don't really have a lot to go on.

 

I think that's mostly because because there haven't been any Centensian civilian structures in the mod so far - what you see in the mod now are small observation posts, and lots of non-functional structures. The Centens were quite an artistic nation, and architecture was one of the greatest forms of art to them: they'd often build massive structures with little practical application, and they especially loved building strucutres that seem physics-defying at first glance. Massive structures supported by small supports were a way for them to "show off", essentially. The monoliths you see in the mod often have lots of communications systems and such inside them, but they were mostly build as pieces of art. The structures you see now are also all standalone structures, whereas the Centens also had massive cities featuring far larger structures.

I don't have access to my old PC at the moment - on which I had saved a couple of images I've used as inspiration before - but this image also shows the physics-defining style pretty well:

The Centensian buildings would likely have more cubes jutting out of them, but otherwise this is a decent approximation of the Centensian style. Large Centensian settlements would also have plenty of green plants and other natural structures embedded in them, since the smaller bases of Centensian buildings means less surface space is needed to build large structures.

The Centensian nation was gigantic, and as such their culture was also quite varied - a lot of Centensian structures used gently flowing shapes, circles and spheres. In Starbound, these would be a lot harder (often even impossible) to properly build in Starbound, which is why the rectangular designs are so prominent in the mod.

 

Will you explain Avikan architecture?